"At the end of 2010, the 'open-source' software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks, found an unusual ally: the Russian government. Vladimir Putin signed a 20-page executive order requiring all public institutions in Russia to replace proprietary software, developed by companies like Microsoft and Adobe, with free open-source alternatives by 2015."

One thing proprietary software such as Microsoft's offerings add, is the ability to introduce code that could create backdoors, or even send data back to the source or government w/o the end user's consent or knowledge... all done vis the OS's kernel or via a driver of the Proprietary OS's signing. And since the OS is proprietary, it's extremely easy to introduce, either by the behest of a foreign government, or by the behest of the home government. At least with Opensource OSs I believe it is much more costly, resource intensive, and difficult to do or even keep in the wild without someone recognizing a "security flaw".

As I said before, it would be quite easy to track outgoing connections (even if you can't establish the content of the traffic).

The Russian Government wouldn't be using a special build of Windows, thus if there's backdoors in the Russian builds then there's going to be backdoors in everyones build.

So what you're essentially suggesting is that globally there isn't a single network administrator with Windows clients or servers in their infrastructure that is competent enough to notice unauthorised outgoing network connections.

Personally I think the more likely answer is that the whole "MS build backdoors to monitor governments" is just scaremongering from the kind of tin-hat wearing conspiracy theorists that think the moon landings were faked.

Furthermore, you wouldn't write such a backdoor into the kernel itself. It would be completely useless there. You'd want it in userspace albeit still built into the OS framework.

You are definitely underestimating the cleverness of a resourceful opponent.

"As I said before, it would be quite easy to track outgoing connections (even if you can't establish the content of the traffic)."

At some point these machines will connect back to MS or google or some other website under US jurisdiction through it's normal course of use.

It would not be impossible to hide information in the tcp stack such that neither the sender nor receiver knows about a hidden channel, all that would be necessary would be for the government to wire tap the traffic. Slight variations in ACK/PSH behavior or window boundaries could in fact contain hidden information at the IP level. The tcp timestamp field could easily leak a few bits of information per packet.

Numerous tricks could happen at the HTTP level. The information could be hidden in a combination of layers.

Information could be leaked across multiple connections. For instance, the simple choices of pseudo random port numbers and sequence numbers can leak information.

Short of reverse engineering the windows kernel, no one can prove the absence of a leak from traffic alone. It may be there, it may not, we'll never know.

Any network admin who claims otherwise is misinformed. The best we can do to put a ceiling on the amount of traffic leaked if it is indeed there.

Of course, if I were a government interested in back doors, I'd simply utilize the existing vulnerabilities and blame everything on "hackers" since the public is always willing to accept that as an excuse. The likelihood of being discovered this way is very slim.

"The Russian Government wouldn't be using a special build of Windows, thus if there's backdoors in the Russian builds then there's going to be backdoors in everyones build."

At the very least, the language/locale/timezones change, that could potentially change the behavior.

"So what you're essentially suggesting is that globally there isn't a single network administrator with Windows clients or servers in their infrastructure that is competent enough to notice unauthorised outgoing network connections."

"Personally I think the more likely answer is that the whole 'MS build backdoors to monitor governments' is just scaremongering from the kind of tin-hat wearing conspiracy theorists that think the moon landings were faked."

It's certainly paranoia, but there is little doubt that the government/ms have the technical ability to pull it off if they wanted to. Open source is clearly superior in this regards.

"Furthermore, you wouldn't write such a backdoor into the kernel itself. It would be completely useless there. You'd want it in userspace albeit still built into the OS framework."

This one is laughable. Do you really expect attackers to follow your rules about where to put backdoors? They'll put it where they please, thank you very much.

You are definitely underestimating the cleverness of a resourceful opponent.

I'm not. I think you're underestimating the cleverness of every other person in IT who has administrated a Windows platform.

At some point these machines will connect back to MS or google or some other website under US jurisdiction through it's normal course of use.

I'm still yet to hear a convincing way how they could without being noticed

It would not be impossible to hide information in the tcp stack such that neither the sender nor receiver knows about a hidden channel, all that would be necessary would be for the government to wire tap the traffic. Slight variations in ACK/PSH behavior or window boundaries could in fact contain hidden information at the IP level.

But so little information that such hack would be pointless

Numerous tricks could happen at the HTTP level. The information could be hidden in a combination of layers.

HTTP isn't encrypted so no it couldn't.
HTTPS perhaps, but again a network admin somewhere in the world would notice updates to a network location where they've not requested it.

Information could be leaked across multiple connections. For instance, the simple choices of pseudo random port numbers and sequence numbers can leak information.

Not if you're sat behind a firewall with restrictive port access - as most businesses and governments would be.

Short of reverse engineering the windows kernel, no one can prove the absence of a leak from traffic alone. It may be there, it may not, we'll never know.

You can't prove something that isn't there.

Any network admin who claims otherwise is misinformed. The best we can do to put a ceiling on the amount of traffic leaked if it is indeed there.

True. But the laws of probabilities are that if MS were leaking data, someone in the world would have noticed before now.

"The Russian Government wouldn't be using a special build of Windows, thus if there's backdoors in the Russian builds then there's going to be backdoors in everyones build."

At the very least, the language/locale/timezones change, that could potentially change the behavior.

Fair point but that sounds awfully like clutching at straws.

It's also just as likely that changing the timezones doesn't change the behaviour.

It's certainly paranoia, but there is little doubt that the government/ms have the technical ability to pull it off if they wanted to. Open source is clearly superior in this regards.

It's 100% just paranoia. Sure MS have the technical ability, but then so does open source.
When was the last time you compiled your own binaries rather than pulling binaries from US repositories?
Sure, you can download the source too, but like Windows' source code, who's to say that backdoors weren't added after the source was published?

You see, we could all make worthless speculation about backdoors in any OS that we haven't programmed personally.

"Furthermore, you wouldn't write such a backdoor into the kernel itself. It would be completely useless there. You'd want it in userspace albeit still built into the OS framework."

This one is laughable. Do you really expect attackers to follow your rules about where to put backdoors? They'll put it where they please, thank you very much.